Hockey rink imbroglio may hinge on cash

Published: Tuesday, September 30, 2008

ERIC FINLEY

College hockey players will take their fight to use a city facility back to the Lubbock City Council next week.

Council members Floyd Price and Linda DeLeon said they will put a lease agreement between the Texas Tech club hockey team and the city on an Oct. 9 council agenda. Price and DeLeon were the only council members to vote last week in favor of the lease. As a result the club team cannot keep an ice rink assembled in the City Bank Coliseum through the end of the season, which wraps in February.

A majority of the council rejected the $40,000 lease, after city staff members said it cost the city almost $4,000 to maintain.

Price and DeLeon held a town hall meeting Monday afternoon that filled the council chambers with hockey players and Tech students, as well as parents who say they use the ice in the winter for family time and to teach their kids to skate.

"We can raise the $4,000," DeLeon said during the meeting, which drew applause from the crowd. "I've got my checkbook. I'm willing to pay up some money myself."

The team's coach, Paul Fioroni, said a story in Saturday's Avalanche-Journal was inaccurate when it reported the hockey team could simply lease the facility day-to-day, as it did over the weekend when it played its first game of the season.

Scott Snider, an assistant city manager, said Monday only a season-long lease would allow the team to keep the rink assembled.

The club's games are in doubt. It's also scheduled to host the Big 12 Championship in 2009.

The lease from last year included a two-year option. Some council members, who did not attend the town hall meeting but voted against the lease, said the club could have avoided the crunch if it exercised the option. The council did not cancel a contract, as some have suggested, they said.

"I'm not going to stand by and let (the club) say something that in my opinion is not true," said Councilman Paul Beane. On Monday, Beane faxed the extension portion of the original lease to reporters, along with a statement.

But Fioroni said the extension was not taken because the city wanted a new one-year agreement without the two-year option. The lease the council voted down is the same as the previous year, minus the extension. At no time during the summer was Fioroni told by city staff the council might reject it, he said.

"For them to say we came in and demanded a contract - we did not," Fioroni said. " ... We had no idea they were going to shoot that down."